Bogota Colombia.– The Dominican Elvis Francois assured that he survived 24 days adrift at sea feeding himself with a bottle of catsup that he found on the sailboat, garlic powder and a few bouillon cubes.
After being rescued by the Colombian Navy, Francois, 47, recounted that his journey began in December when he worked on the repair of the sailboat on the island of San Martín in the Netherlands Antilles, where he lives. He was fixing the engine and the sail on the pier when the sailboat was swept away by the force of the sea.
He tried to return to port but lost control because it took him a while to rig the sail and fix it. “I called my friends, they tried to contact me, but I lost the signal. There was nothing else to do but sit and wait, but I had no food,” Francois recalled in a video released by the Navy.
Then he found a bottle of ketchup and the bouillon cubes he ate. Francois was found in good health, the Colombian Navy said Wednesday.
In order to survive, he said, he had to constantly draw water from the boat to prevent it from sinking. He too tried to light a fire to send a signal for help, but was unsuccessful.
After days without seeing land, without knowing what to do or where he was, he saw a plane go by and signaled with a mirror. He knew that he was detected when the plane came by again.
“At some point I lost hope and thought about my family, but I thank the coast guard, if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t be telling the story,” he said after being rescued.
The sailboat he was on was located from the air when it was 193 nautical kilometers northwest of La Guajira, in the extreme north of Colombia, and then helped by sea with the help of a merchant ship.
“His efforts to maneuver the vessel and the equipment on board were unsuccessful, prompting him, in a desperate action, to mark the word ‘help’ along the hull,” the Navy said in a statement.
The man was transferred to the Port of Cartagena, in the Caribbean, where he received medical attention.
The Navy made Francois available to the immigration authority so that he can be returned to his country of origin.
